DBUS-CLEANUP-SOCKE(1)

📦
version 1.16.2 · 15 versions
, in alpine 3.22

✨ DBUS-CLEANUP-SOCKE(1) ✨

ok so this is a page from the User Commands manual, and honestly bestie, it's a little tiny one but it's got lore 💅

🌸 NAME 🌸

dbus-cleanup-sockets — the little guy that cleans up leftover sockets in a directory 🧹✨

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

dbus-cleanup-sockets [DIRECTORY]

like, you can hand it a directory. or not. it's flexible like that 🫶

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

dbus-cleanup-sockets is the command that goes around cleaning up unused D-Bus connection sockets. no cap, that's the whole job. if you want the big-picture tea on what D-Bus even is, the manpage points you at https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus/ 👑

If you give it no arguments at all, dbus-cleanup-sockets cleans up sockets in the standard default socket directory for the per-user-login-session message bus — which is usually /tmp. that's the default, bestie. Optionally, you can pass a different DIRECTORY on the command line if you're feeling spicy 🌶️

💀 important vibe check: on Linux, this program is essentially useless. not "kinda useless" — essentially useless. because D-Bus defaults to using "abstract sockets" that exist only in memory and don't have a corresponding file in /tmp. so there's literally nothing sitting there for it to clean. iconic of Linux tbh 😭

On most other flavors of UNIX though? it's a whole different story. the socket files can leak when programs using D-Bus exit abnormally or without closing their D-Bus connections. so it might actually be interesting to run dbus-cleanup-sockets in a cron job to mop up any leaked sockets 🧼

Or, honestly? you can just ignore the leaked sockets. they aren't really hurting anything — other than cluttering the output of ls /tmp 🙈 like they're just vibing there rent-free.

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

dbus-cleanup-sockets was adapted by Havoc Pennington from linc-cleanup-sockets, which was written by Michael Meeks. giving credit where credit is due, we love to see it 🫶✨

⭐ BUGS ⭐

found a bug? please send bug reports to the D-Bus mailing list or bug tracker — see https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus/ 💌 they genuinely want to hear about it, fr fr.

✨ that's the whole page, bestie ✨ this one comes from D-Bus 1.16.2, dated 03/03/2025 — go forth and mop up those sockets (or don't, on Linux, because again: useless 💀) 🧚💜

📦 where this page comes from